


the state that i'm in (oh my my my)

by avid_reader1



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood Assholes, Childhood Sweethearts, Developing Relationship, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Pre-Relationship, TW: Intricate Rituals, except the opposite of sweethearts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-01-26 02:22:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21366604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avid_reader1/pseuds/avid_reader1
Summary: The quietest "oh, fuck" Richie ever says is because of Eddie.
Relationships: Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 25





	1. sparred, wrestled, and raged

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [deadbeat club](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16836796) by [ssstrychnine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine). 

> So! I guess I write IT fic now! What a development in my life!
> 
> Title based half off "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us" and "Mary's Song (Oh My My My). The two artists I feel capture reddie the best: Sufjan Stevens and Taylor Swift. 
> 
> This work was heavily inspired by chapter 13 of ssstrychnine's "deadbeat club", aka the magnificent author of the fandom classic go west. Do yourself a fucking favour and READ IT.

The quietest "oh, fuck" Richie ever says is because of Eddie.

A summer day, the kind that sticks in the nooks and crannies of you, forces your tongue out your mouth, makes your skin peel off liquid. They've been jumping from house to house, from Bill's suburban castle to Bev's aunt's wild bungalow to Mike's ranch, and found no solace from the sun anywhere. Now, they've taken to wheeling their bikes down the streets, too hot to even think about pedaling, Eddie nervously muttering about whether his fannypack contained sufficient sunscreen, like they didn't all know he had a fucking ten-ounce bottle tucked in there. 

"Guys," moans Richie. "Fuck, guys, I'm gonna melt right through this fucking concrete. Eds, say you'll miss me."

"Melt in peace," Stan says, equally winded in the heat.

"Maybe we'll replace you with someone who knows my fucking name," Eddie says, and Richie doesn't need to look to know he's rolling his eyes. Richie looks over at him, mimes a tear rolling down one cheek. Eddie rolls his eyes again and sticks his tongue out at him. 

"It's tragic, you know, truly tragic and I can't believe you're just dismissing how your mom is about to lose the best dicking down she's ever gotten in her life --"

At least three "Beep, beep"s are hurled his way and Richie's tongue tucks itself back in place for a few barks of a laugh before it hangs back out in suffering. 

"God, shut the fuck up," Eddie snaps. His brow is shining with sweat and Richie knows he's fucked because he finds, like, Eddie's pit stains adorable. Any sign of Eddie slipping from fastidiously polished drives Richie insane; that sewer fight was a hell of a time, half pants-shittingly terrified and half-turned on from Eddie's gunk-smeared face. 

They end up at the quarry, of course. It ends up being a race to who strips the fastest and gets in the water first, scrabbling and pushing and shrieking. Eddie shows the enormity of his discomfort with the heat by barely hesitating before jumping into the admittedly filthy water, doesn't natter on about lurking creatures or head-splitting rocks or nonsensically situated toxic waste.

They all hit the water at about the same time, Bev's laughter a bell-like scream that echoes against the rock. It becomes, as it always does, a rowdy affair of shoving heads under and kicks and punches slowed down by heavy water. The current is gentle, so they're able to stay mostly in place. Stan knocks into Mike knocks into Richie, and their wild laughter wraps itself around them, like they own the world, like nothing could ruin it. 

Bill shoves Eddie right into Richie's chest by accident. Water in his eyes, blurry without his glasses, Richie squints against the near-feral grin eating up Eddie's face, stretching his cheeks, white teeth blinding. 

"Oh, fuck," Richie says. His lips barely move but he's shaken from heart to gut. Like he's swallowed the quarry all up, leaving his insides to float away from their proper place. It's an oath he feels down to his fucking bones.

No one hears him. No one even looks his way, Eddie already swimming towards Bill for retribution. But Richie still feels unbearably seen. More naked than being in boxers ought to feel, like he's been flayed open, skin raggedly cut into the meat and truth of him. 

\--

So, Richie Tozier is 13 when he realizes a couple of things. Even in the safety of his own head, he can't own up to it, can't face what gripped his stomach and made him feel sick apart from that disease-riddled water. So, he's 13 and he can't say it out loud. Because he knows what it means. To want what he wants, who he wants, it's asking for bruises and broken bones, for hatred splitting his head open like a thrown rock. Not just in this goddamn nightmare cesspit of a town, but the world. He's seen the news, he's heard Eddie prattle on about dirty Subway poles and hip amputation. Richie knows what the world will think and so he swallows it down, like the biggest placebo pill ever invented. 

\--

So, then, he's 15, they all are, except for Ben. So, he's still in love with Eddie, and it's less a truth that makes his mouth dry and tongue rough, more a natural truth of, like, the known universe. He thinks - knows, kind of - that most, if not all, the Losers have all figured out. Stan keeps fucking looking at him, that stupidly knowing side-eye every time Richie rains down endearments, cups Eddie's face, pinches his cheeks, touches his arm or hand or waist. Bev never looks but is very deliberate, has a special little eye-roll just for Richie and his Eddie bullshit. Ben only smiles. That fucker - the one who understands the most, maybe, except Richie already knows he and Bev are one foot in the fucking aisle. 

Eddie - well, it's not so easy. They swim in the quarry, they shove at slippery skin, and their hands catch in the dips and tucks of each other's awkward teenage boy bodies, and it's the easiest, most painful thing. Oh, sure, Richie does it with Bill and the rest of them, touches them a whole fucking lot, but Richie has never been a liar. He doesn't have the stuff for it. He never says a fucking word and he's the most honest person in their little club, just by virtue of his renegade hands. 

Richie's sure he knows. Is almost absolutely certain, and Eddie is infuriating and anal retentive and sometimes so fucking mean that it makes Richie laugh and laugh, but he's not cruel. At least, not to the Losers. So he can't decode why Eddie lets Richie do all that shit, his goddamn honest hands making their honest way down his body, why he sometimes looks at Richie like he doesn't have a choice. Richie makes it easy to get anybody's attention, but Eddie's eyes, sometimes, brim with something else. It's sweet and cold, like the freeze in his head after a big spoonful of ice cream of a knife in his gut (or a claw -). Is that what cruelty feels like, from Eddie? Like the ache in his teeth after a too-big, too-fast spoonful of frozen chocolate?

So, he's 15, 17, then miracle of miracles, 18, legal adulthood. So they swim in the quarry, struggle first through pre then real calculus, then college applications. Struggle through the terrifying thought of the future and the world that stretches beyond the sleepy corners of Derry, Maine. 

"Bev, baby angel, promise you won't forget us when you're strolling through the streets of Paris," Richie murmurs, pressing himself close to her as they lay on the grass patch by the train tracks. It's a day of sweet heat, too nice to hole up in the spider-infested shithole they affectionately know as their clubhouse. School's just gotten out, Eddie doesn't have to be home for another hour, and they're sprawled all over each other, naked arms and legs and hands touching and touching. Honestly, they're as incestuous as Star Wars.

"Oh, Richie baby, never bother," Bev breathes in a sweet Southern drawl, crooked grin red and gorgeous. Surprisingly, in the past few years, she'd taken to the Voices as eagerly as he has. "You never forget your first love."

Richie throws his head back, to hide his stinging eyes. He whips his head around, to where Bill is lounging on his back with closed eyes. "And you, Billiam, good sir! Whilst you frequent the pretentious, arty-farty corners of the world, pretending that's white paint on your canvas -"

Bill wrinkles his nose, smiling. "B-beep f-fucking beep, Rich."

"- don't forget your humble roots in this bottomfeeder town! And your humble, bottomfeeder chums!"

"You most of all, eh?" Mike calls out, grinning, sitting up to throw a handful of grass at him. 

"You know it, Hanlon." Richie winks.

Eddie snorts across from him. Richie turns his eyes to him, and Eddie narrows his own. "Fucking what, Richie?"

Richie taps his finger to his chin. “Oh, Eddie Spaghetti, sweetums, love of my life, I’m just overwhelmed by the possibility of _your _future.”

“What’s with the fortune-telling kick? Also, not fair, what’s your embarrassing future?” Stan says.

Richie tuts. “Oh, Staniel. Staniel the maniel. We all know I’ll be braving the New York standup scene and, when I fail to make it, will be making money off my sweet, nubile body.”

Stan screws up his face, with the rest of them. “New rule, never say nubile again.”

“Nubile nubile nubile nubile,” Richie sings.

Eddie lunges at him, shoving a hand over his mouth. Stan groans, scurrying away from beside Richie to avoid the ensuing scuffle.

Stan side-eyes. Bev doesn’t look, rolls her eyes. Ben smiles.

Richie jabs a finger into Eddie’s left rib, where he knows he’s ticklish. Renegade hands.

That’s his future. His hands have always known.

\--

What the Losers don’t know is he applied to five colleges, got into five colleges, rejected five colleges. Thinks about Berkeley and itches, about NYU and retches. He doesn’t know his future, but he knows for a fact it’s not in a classroom, not in a dorm room with some random asshole who’s secretly a serial killer or has disgusting socks.

That night, he knocks on Eddie’s window after scaling that skinny, old tree that is bound to give under some Loser one of these days. Probably him.

“What the fuck do you want, asshole, it’s midnight,” Eddie spits at him, opening his window wider to let him in.

“Oh, Eds baby, I just had to see you.” Richie blows him a kiss. Eddie rolls his eyes and bites down on a smile. Richie laughs - it's the kind of joke that’s funny cause it’s the truth, easy and slapstick.

Richie jumps on Eddie’s bed, ignoring Eddie’s hissed protest at his muddy shoes and dusty shorts from the bike over. He turns his head into Eddie’s pillow, sniffs, not even trying to be subtle. He’s already got five jokes lined up if Eddie asks.

“You better not fucking fall asleep here, asshole, I can’t explain you to my mom,” Eddie huffs, dropping down roughly next to him and aggressively fixing up the blanket over them.

“Don’t kid yourself, Eds, me and a bed? Your mom would be thrilled.”

“Hey, asshole, I’m serious! Don’t fucking fall asleep here.”

“Sure, Eds,” he murmurs, and drifts.

\--

He dreams.

Memories, snarled breath and bared teeth, glowing eyes and a sweet, angry sewer-stained face.

Red shorts, and bleeding hands, lover, bright against white.

Richie dreams, heaves awake with the taste of sun in his mouth, like a deep clean at the dentist. Next to him, Eddie breathes lightly, slight shoulders moving in a steady up and down that Richie’s heart gently slows to mimic.

Richie dreams, and wakes, and nothing feels more like fantasy than lying in this bed, the love of his life lying there unknowing.

Richie dreams, and wakes, and makes a choice.

\--

They’ve always had this unspoken thing that swells between them. Richie’s known that, has known it since that stupid, fateful day with a mouthful of water and a heart full of ache. but this is a different kind of unspoken. This is the kind where something’s holding his tongue, his heart in a vice grip and he’s not speaking, not because he’s not allowed but because to speak would break the ground he walked on. The earth would splinter and shake, spewing up from its molten core, burning feet and forests. Worst of all, Eddie would turn those sweet brown eyes in – something. Betrayal. Rejection. Something. He’d rather step into the jaws of IT himself than face that.

So, he has to leave. It’s talk or leave, and so he has to leave. Running away, pretending to run towards.

\--

Richie takes a week to mull it over. An unprecedented move for one Richard Tozier but needs must. He already knows, though. He’ll take the coward’s way out, though it’s only smart really. He’ll make up his excuses later, when he has to.

“Uris residence,” Stan answers the phone, that polite Uris boy as the sagging old biddies at the temple like to see him.

“Hey, Stan.”

Something – his voice or his words or the void where a dirty joke would have already been made – something sobers Stan up and makes him ask, “What’s wrong, Richie?”

“Stan, did you know I’m in love with Eddie?”

A pause. “Is that. Is that a rhetorical question.”

Richie blows out a heavy breath through his nose; he winds his finger around the phone cord, slamming hard back into the wall. Fuck. He’d known, but. Fuck shitting fuck.

“Does Eddie know I’m in love with Eddie?”

Stan hums, a little sharp. “I don’t know, why don’t you ask Eddie?”

Richie snorts.

“Richie.” Stan becomes serious. “Richie, don’t do anything stupid.”

“Oh, Staniel, when have I ever?” Richie hangs up, ignores Stan calling his name. Thinks about dialing Bev’s number. It had taken her ages to set up a landline in her shitty one-bedroom of freedom, and every time anyone had wanted to talk to her, they either had to show up or call Ben’s house, where she was most likely to be, corrupting him and making him blush that pretty Hanscom blush.

Richie decides to do it old school, breezes past his parents who don’t look up from the various activities they’ve deemed more important than their only son. Decides to walk it, shoving his headphones over his ears and presses play for the half-hour walk.

Two streets away from Bev’s town-edge shithole, it starts pouring, big fat droplets clinging to his eyelashes before inching down his cheek. It starts off slow, then the heavens open and Richie’s soaked in an instant. He doesn’t run, though, takes his sweet time and knocks on Bev’s door trying and failing not to shiver.

When she opens the door, she’s frowning but not surprised, so Stan must have called.

“Stan called, dipshit.” Bev opens the door wider. “Come in and have some tea.”

Richie sits shivering at her dingy kitchen table, everything blurry behind his rain-spattered glasses. He hears her puttering around, the clang of the kettle on the stove, two cups being set on the counter and jars of jasmine being opened and closed. While the kettle whistles on, Bev shoves a towel at him, taking his glasses off and drying it on the edge of her shirt.

When she’s finished, he puts them on and looks at her sitting across from him. The room is silent, save the pounding of the rain on Bev’s thin walls and the whine of the stove.

Stan called,” she says again, turning her head towards the window. It doesn’t matter, anyway; Richie’s looking down at his hands, blue veins stark against the cold white of them.

“You could just tell him.”

Richie barks out one sharp laugh.

“I’m serious. You could.”

Richie lifts his eyes to her, raising an eyebrow. “And what, live out a happy fairytale a la Marsh and Hanscom style?”

Bev rolls her eyes. Her special little eye roll. She gets up, the water done boiling.

Richie looks back down at his hands. Bev’s not really motherly, not the kind that Richie knows. Not cloying or snarling or absent, just a sharp gentle presence that makes you tea. She cares and loves, but the same amount that Ben or Bill or even Eddie cares and loves. A clumsy, kiddy, fierce love, pushing and shoving and tea. Since meeting her, Richie has always equated a hot cup with love.

“I’m leaving Derry,” he mumbles, twisting his hands into the towel.

Bev sets down the cup in front of him, then sits back down, tucking her legs up into the skirt of her lace dress. “Yeah, we all are, Trashmouth. Is it just settling in?”

“No, I’m leaving, uh. I’m leaving next week.”

Graduation is in a couple of days, and they’d made half-baked plans to get their last swims in, vandalize some shit, stamp their mark over Derry and then lock it away, throwing the key behind them. It’ll be another two and a half months before Bill, Ben, and Eddie set off for college, before Mike starts his job at the library and his online classes, before Bev climbs into the maws of the American fashion industry. They’d made plans to squeeze each other into every second before they all went their separate ways. Their weird, tightly-knotted Losers’ club.

Across from him, Bev’s sweet bare mouth hangs slightly open.

Richie clears his throat. “I bought a ticket already.”

Suddenly, Bev’s brow pulls down into a tight frown. “Richie Tozier, are you seriously fucking running away?”

“Well, depends on how you define running away.”

Bev slams her cup down. “Fuck, Richie. This is such a stupid, shitty thing to do.”

“Fuck, Bev, I know,” Richie moans softly into his hands, shoving his face into them.

“Richie, honey…”

“Bev, baby angel,” he murmurs.

Bev’s voice sharpens. “Ask him to come with you.”

“Beverly – ”

“Richie, I’m serious. He’ll do it.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Richie’s throat is tightening and he barely gets the words out. “Bev, I can’t. He’s had fucking – years, to do something. To say something.”

Bev’s still scowling at him. “So have you.”

Richie closes his eyes. “You know it’s not the same thing.”

“How? How is it not, I mean –”

“Darling,” he cuts in. “I have to do this. I can’t live like this anymore. I have to leave.”

“I’m not saying don’t leave. I’m saying don’t leave like this.” When Richie looks up at her again, her eyes are big, swimming with love and anger but mostly loss. And Richie remembers that they’re all fucking kids, just so lost, hands fumbling over first loves and not knowing a goddamn thing about anything. You’d think they’d all be less of a mess, considering, then.

Richie lets the words open up a silence, big enough to swallow them, so he doesn’t have to listen to what they’re saying.

“Can I sleep here tonight?”

“Fuck you.” Bev sighs. “Let me change my sheets.”

\--

He doesn’t ask Bev not to tell the others, but she doesn’t anyway. Just keeps looking at him, scowling and sighing and rolling her eyes. He winks at her when she does, grins big and stupid, and she just scowls and sighs and rolls her eyes harder.

Stan’s side-eyes get worse somehow, but he doesn’t ask, about Eddie or that call or anything else. Small mercies.

Richie spends the week like he’s breathing through one lung, like he’s perched on a tight rope in heels on a bicycle, with fucking fire-breathing lions underneath him. Gets as much of each Loser as he can, eyefuls and handfuls and laughter. Renegade hands on Eddie’s hips ears cheeks.

The night before he leaves Derry, he scales that spindly fucking tree again up to Eddie’s window. He’s just about to knock when it slides open, Eddie’s glare furious and luminous under the moon.

“Hurry up, before my mom sees you.” Something in Richie’s face must make the pretense slide away. Eddie doesn’t even try to shove him back out or otherwise threaten defenestration.

Richie thumps back into Eddie’s bed, memorizing the sharp line of its sheets, the clean antispetical smell of them. He can never step foot in a hospital without his heart thumping like a rabbit in heat. He keeps his eyes open, staring at Eddie hanging up his diploma in a gilded frame.

“Don’t, asshole, my mom told me to,” Eddie says, before Richie’s even opened his mouth.

Richie wants to be what Eddie’s expecting, the wise-cracking Richie Eddie knows, but he doesn’t have the energy. Not on the last night he might be seeing the love of his miserable fucking life, in all his anal retentive, hypochondriac, stupidly gorgeous glory. That’s one thing Eddie never realizes about himself: he’s a fucking five-star knockout, just like the rest of the Losers.

Richie just hums, makes himself very still as Eddie carefully lays down next to him. This bed is bigger than that hammock but their arms are still pressed together.

“Hey, Eds.”

“Don’t call me Eds.”

“Promise not to punch me?”

Eddie’s head lifts, his brow pulled into that dramatic frown of befuddlement. If anything, Richie’s really not the drama queen of the Losers club. “What the fuck?”

“Eds, you gotta promise.”

“Fuck, what – yeah, fine, and don’t fucking call me that.”

Richie sighs, rolls over Eddie, still fucking talking, and kisses him.

It’s awkward and Eddie’s talking mouth displaces Richie’s, but Eddie shuts up very quickly and he’s able to slot his lips in place, slow and tender. A kiss that you savor.

It’s not a long kiss but Richie’s licked into his mouth, pushing over Eddie’s lips and teeth and finally his tongue, at which point he makes a noise only animals could understand – primal and instinctual, pure base need. His hands drift to Eddie’s neck, his hair, and their hips align like by cosmic divination, like it was written in the stars.

When they separate, their lips make a little popping sound, which Richie decides he will jerk off to for the rest of his natural fucking life.

“You promised,” Richie murmurs. Under him, Eddie’s eyes are wide, that single stupid curl lying limp on his forehead where Richie’s own had crushed it down. There’s a faint red mark where Richie’s glasses pressed a little too hard into the bridge of Eddie’s nose and Richie wants to kiss it. He’s so close that he can see where Eddie’s lashes fan out one by one. Embarrassingly, Richie wants to kiss that, too.

Richie sighs. Rolls off him, keeps his eyes down and trained straight ahead, heaves himself out of the window and keeps himself from looking back by clenching his nails into the skin of his palm until it bleeds in crescent red.

Richie, as he’s shimmying down Eddie’s tree, is very suddenly hit with a choking fear he’s only ever felt once and runs to his car, shaking hands turning the key and proceeding to peel the fuck out of Eddie’s driveway.

Once he gets home, he throws his whole body at where the phone is hung, dialing with unsteady hands.

“Stan, Stan, I kissed Eddie and I’m leaving Derry tomorrow,” Richie pants.

“Richie, wh – Richie, what?”

He hangs up.

Richie lies there, shaking in his bed, until he passes out.

\--

Bev knows what time his bus is and she’s sitting there at the station, still in pajamas, hair a shining riot as the sun reaches weakly out past the night. He drops heavily next to her, setting his bag down at their feet.

She’s glaring but her mouth is soft. “Call me when you get there.”

“I will.”

“Richie.” Oh, fuck, there’s tears in her voice. “I’m fucking serious. Call me. Call anyone.”

“Wanna know something funny.” And it’s not funny at all, and there’s wetness crawling down his face. “I kissed Eddie last night.”

“Fuck. Richie, _fuck_.” Suddenly, she turns to him and punches his arm.

Richie closes his eyes so he can pretend he’s not crying, just lets his body move with the hit. There’s no reason for her to have that much grief in her voice, not over this. But that was the way of the Losers. Always spreading emotions between all seven of them until it became a messy, unknown smear of sad mad glad.

“Richie. Call him.”

He hears the bus pull up, the squeal of massive tires and the weighty stench of gasoline. Richie boards at the very last minute, Bev’s hand tight in his.

“Richie, honey, please.”

He pulls her to the doors of the bus. Richie bows, twisting his grip so that her hand is draped over his like a lady’s over a knight’s. He kisses her hand and she lets out a watery laugh. “See you later, Ringwald.”

That beautiful, watery laugh again. Through the ocean in his eyes, she’s blurry and gorgeous, a goddess in pale red. “Don’t be a stranger, Trashmouth.”

He grins. It hurts like a motherfucker. “You never forget your first love.”


	2. i can tell you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie takes to New York like a duck to water, or maybe a spider to nuclear waste, for a cooler simile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me a normal length of time! Ha. Haha.

Richie takes to New York like a duck to water, or maybe a spider to nuclear waste, for a cooler simile. In his first few days there, he finds a youth shelter type of thing and while it's not the Ritz, it's warm and sometimes, there's sandwiches. 

He gets a job at a café. Pretty unglamorous work, but Richie gets to take home leftover pastries and he's hailed a hero at the shelter.

Richie works and eats and sleeps and doesn't call anyone he's supposed to call. Doesn't do anything he's supposed to do, and he relishes in it a little. 

Bev is probably incandescent. Who knows about Eddie, his little heart probably gave out from rage. 

He thinks about the Losers sparingly. He doesn't let them cross his mind much, saves he thought of them for special occasions - like squirrelling food away for the winter. He thinks about Eddie even less, afraid that he'll worry all his memories into fading like worn cloth. Also, for other obvious reasons. Richie embarrasses himself, so much.

\--

It's a full month before Richie gathers up the courage to step into a grimy, piss-scented New York payphone booth and dial a familiar number. 

"Bev Marsh, who's speaking?"

Bev's phone voice always makes Richie laugh. It's so prim and neat, everything like the lady she was meant to be - fully incongruous to her short, wild her and wicked red mouth. 

"Hello?"

Richie clears his throat. "Hey, sweets. Ya miss me?"

"Oh!" Bev gasps, voice high in anger and joy. "Oh, fuck you! Richie, fuck, is that you?"

Richie pouts, full speed ahead on the bit even without an audience. "Forgotten me already, baby angel? I'm gutted, truly, quick, someone tell me where the nearest bridge is." 

Bev giggles. "They've got plenty in the Big Apple, I've heard." There's some rustling from her end, probably a tug down of her dress or a tuck of hair behind an ear. "So, what did Eddie say when you called him? Did he crawl through the phone and punch your heart out or something?"

Richie tugs hard at his hair, gets caught on a snarl of it and pulls harder. "Wanted to hear your dulcet tones on my dying breath, baby angel."

"Oh, darling, I'm flattered."

Richie huffs a timid laugh. Pulls at his hair. "Nah, I, uh. I haven't actually called him."

Pause. "Oh, Richie."

"In my defense," he hurries to add, "he probably would crawl through the phone and punch my heart out. Then fucking, I dunno, feed it to me."

"_Richie_." 

"Bev. I know."

"It's been a month, Rich. He thinks you're fucking dead or something."

Richie can't help but smile, winding the phone line around his finger. Ridiculous, batshit insane love of his life Eddie Kaspbrak. Probably think he's drank a cup full of Mountain Dew, Hep B flavor. Someone's knocked him out in an alley somewhere for the sole purpose of dripping blood in his mouth. Probably think he's got maggots burrowed under the numerous scapes and cuts around his body - that he's lying dead and eaten away in some backwater corner of New York. 

Richie huffs a laugh. "I'm in a phone booth right now, he'd hyperventilate to death if he could see me now. How, uh." Richie clears his throat. "How's he been, my little Eds Spaghetts?"

"Ask him yourself, shithead." He can picture Bev's furious eyes so clearly; Richie aches in a soft pulse.

"Were you not listening about the heart punching, then eating? He'd kill me with the force of his tiny mind."

"You kissed him then skipped town in the same fucking twelve-hour span, I think he might be kinda owed that, Trashmouth." Bev sighs. "Rich, honey, shove every quarter you have left in that phone and _call him_."

Fuck fucking fuck. Richie worries at his lip, then groans. "As you wish, princess."

Bev laughs, the kind that bounced off rocks and made you fall in love, and hangs up. Richie murmurs 'I love you too', shoves his hand into his pocket; clenches it around the coins rattling loose inside and slams the phone back onto the receiver. Another day. 

\--

It’s another two weeks before Richie screws up enough courage to dial a fucking number. In that time, Richie quits the café job, somehow lands a checkout job at a CD store housed within a small brownstone, very obscure and _very_ New York. He rings up CDs with his headphones on and not making eye contact, half-listens to loud high-pitched fights about Backstreet Boys vs N*SYNC, sweeps floors and misses his endless supply of pastry. 

It’s been two weeks since he called Bev, since he’s even fucking looked at a phone. And tragedy of all tragedies his discman’s died, so he’s stuck listening to the stupid shit bleeding out of the store’s speakers. Good music playing for all the customers to hear is a fat fucking chance. Dan, his manager, has the weirdest fucking tastes, will let bubblegum pop bleed straight into 40s doo-wop into wall-thumping rap without batting an eyelash. 

Richie is straightening up the K section, listening half to the bell on the door and half to the tinny drag of sax filling the corners of the room. _You left me last September to return to me before long_, comes the syrupy chorus. 

_Eddie, my love_, it continues, and it’s like time bends. One moment Richie’s on his feet straightening up the K section and the next he’s flat on his ass, head between his knees and gasping. He wants, nonsensically, an inhaler. 

Richie rushes up to his feet, forces coughs out to justify the water streaming down his cheeks. He spends his shift in a watery daze, like someone’s dunked his head under a tank and is holding him down by the neck; he’s spluttering and choking at whatever is welling up inside his chest and he can’t breathe for hours. Finishes his shift and rushes straight to the grimiest, most disgusting phonebooth he can find, where hobos have definitely shit and hookers have definitely fucked and the first sin of man was probably committed. 

Richie blows out a breath, gust and bluster, shoving every coin he has left into the slot and dialing with careful fingers. He’d say they aren’t shaking, but it’s been so long since he could lie to himself about this.

“Kaspbrak residence.”

Oh. _Oh_. That’s the stuff. Like a handful of black tar punched straight up his nose. 

Richie laughs. “Hey, Eddie baby,” he says, raw and true in the month and a half without practice. 

Silence. Then, “You motherfucker. Goddamn bastard asshole dickhead _motherfucker_.”

“Where the fuck are you?” Eddie snarls, sounding half-feral and insane and adorable. Richie almost starts panting. 

“Is this phone sex, road trip edition?”

“Asshole, _where are you_?” Fuck, Richie would crawl to Derry, if he could.

“Caller’s choice, sweetheart.” Richie winks, even if Eddie can’t see him. Before he can start yelling again, Richie says, “I’m in New York. Staying in a shelter, fucking around, getting some practice in.” 

A pause. “Practice.” The silence after sounds immediately like regret. 

Richie grins. “Oh, New York’s no match for my charms, Eds. Fucking left, right, and center and getting plenty of practice in for your mom.”

This is where Eddie would groan, would cuss Richie out for calling him Eds and joking about fucking his mom. He’s already sketched out the next five minutes or so of this call, down to the little noises Eddie will make when Richie’ll say something particularly annoying, all special for him. 

He doesn’t though. It’s just silence and tight breathing, and Richie feels out of sorts, suddenly. 

“Oh, Eddie baby, you know you’re still the love of my life,” Richie croons, a sloppy bid at restoring equilibrium. “My dynamite gal.”

“It’s been a month, asshole,” Eddie says. “Why haven’t you called?”

Richie clears his throat against the sudden lump in his throat, laughs a breathy, flirty laugh. “Sorry, baby, I’ve been busy reigning the streets of New York, fucking ass and taking names.”

Tight silence, still. Richie, miraculously, is running out of bullshit to spew. The Eddie he remembers can match him diatribe for diatribe, can raise his voice louder and angrier over Richie’s own torrent of shithead commentary. Eyebrows furrowed darkly over sweet, furious eyes, mouth seeming almost too slow for the words sprinting out of them with the way his tongue stumbled over his lips sometimes. Richie was always very aware of Eddie’s lips. 

“Are you —” Eddie starts, suddenly. Richie straightens up from his slouch against the booth’s glass. “When are you coming home?”

“Interesting word for that shithole,” Richie replies without thinking, except Eddie’s not really wrong. Home, to Richie, means filthy quarry water and swimming and the loud laughter of uncaring children, warm tea and even sewers, when thought about in relation to brave, upturned faces beating the shit out of a child-eating demon clown; when thinking about a loud, hyperventilating boy screaming his lungs out and still so beautiful, even shit-stained and shit-scared. 

“Back to Derry, then, asshole.” Eddie pauses. “Are you — I mean, are you ever? Coming back, I mean,” he continues, after a second. 

Richie knows the truth but wishes it isn’t what it is. If only to spare Eddie from hearing. “I dunno, really, Eds, but. I don’t think so.”

“So – so what, you’re just leaving, forever? Without a fucking word, and it’s goodbye forever?” Eddie’s breaths are coming out short and tight. Richie’s hands itch with the need to splay them over his heaving shoulders, run them gently down his cheeks. 

A distant yell sounds on the other end of the line, and Richie's mouth flattens into a grimace. Before he can say anything though, Eddie blows out an audibly steadying breath. He clears his throat, saying, “Call me tomorrow.”

Richie is lost, unsure of what to say. Hands still itching. Casual, casual is always best. “What do you want me to call about?” Casual, veering on dumbass, familiar territory for him. 

Eddie huffs and it’s almost normal again. “The Tozier Trashmouth, I’m sure you could come up with something.”

Another pregnant pause. How apt; a silence with a living thing burrowed deep within it, needy and leeching and helpless. 

Suddenly, a shrill beep shakes them out of the silence. 

“Richie, fucking promise.” Eddie sounds so young, petulant and needy, a step away from ‘Mommy’. But that’s Richie, to a goddamn tee, so he dismisses it. 

Another beep. “Fuck, yes, fuck. I don’t have any quarters left, so this is it from me till tomorrow, sweetheart.” Saying the quiet part out loud is too gentle a phrase for what Richie is doing, but he’s choking on the stench of human depravity and his hands are red from where he’s scrubbed them on his jeans to get rid of the itch. Maybe the quiet part needs to be said out loud one fucking time. 

“_Richie_.”

“I fucking will, alright?” Pretend like it’s a hardship, pretend like it’s a chore on the goddamn to-do list, pretend like you wouldn’t scrape your throat to fucking bits till he said stop. Good old Trashmouth, the dancing clown. 

Eddie huffs, a decisive noise of both derision and victory, somehow, then hangs up. 

Richie keeps the phone to his ear, hand fisted around it so hard it creaks, until the dial tone flattens out into white noise. 

Then, he goes out to get absolutely fucking shitfaced.

It’s not as hard to get illegal alcohol in the big city as Richie had expected. Some kid at the shelter with the most beautiful lips Richie’d ever seen had given him a couple of fakes in exchange for some almond croissants, and they worked well enough to get him some shitty vodka and piss the night away. 

So, shitty vodka tucked away in a brown paper bag, Richie walks and walks, taking periodic swigs until his ears warm and his vision fuzzes at the edges and turns the New York alleys at night into a fairytale land. New York could be beautiful, in the way a feral cat could be. Dangerous and disease-ridden, but sleek and eye-catching and slyly supernatural, like if you closed your eyes too long it would disappear. Alcohol only did wonders for it. 

Richie drinks and drinks, straight vodka cause it’s one of those days. Lets his vision swim harder staring at the pinpricks of light that New York invented in place of the stars, billboards and the tops of skyscrapers. 

He drinks and walks, drinks and walks, until he happens to glance at his watch and notices that he’s been walking for hours, the day ticked over into the earliest hours of the next. Up ahead, Richie squints his eyes and sees the weak fluorescent light flickering over a sign declaring ‘phone’. Lifting the bottle to his lips again, he stumbles over and slams the numbers in, fumbling around so he’s got the now-empty bottle in one hand and the phone in the other. It rings, each shrill sound echoing the unsteadiness of his breathing. Excitement or fear or even just plain old hammered. 

“Who the fuck is this?”

Richie feels the drunkenness slam out of him, like he’s licked a power line or snorted a gram. “It’s tomorrow, Eds. I promised.” That was pretty articulate, considering.

“Are you fucking drunk right now?” Eddie shrieks in a whisper. Richie can just imagine it: Eddie sprinting to the trilling phone, Sonia Kaspbrak laying comatose on the living room couch. Hands fisted nervously around sleep shorts, his hair flopping gently over a forehead furrowed in contained rage. 

“Uh, are you?” Richie throws back, to try and recover from the image, then winces.

“Oh, my fucking god, you absolute train wreck of a human. Why are you calling me at 2 in the fucking morning? Where are you?”

Too many questions, Richie moans, but in his head cause his mouth is suddenly too full to say much of anything. 

“Are you – you fucking pig, are you throwing up? You’re throwing up right into the fucking phone, your retches are fucking echoing, Richie!”

“Stop fucking screaming,” Richie moans, out loud this time, using the paper bag to wipe his mouth. He takes a few moments to breathe raggedly at the ground, bracing himself for whatever may come out, taking care to angle his mouth away from the phone. When nothing hangs out apart from spit, he presses his forehead to the cool glass of the booth; chuckles at the many, many things Eddie would have to say about that. “Ok, I think I’m good.”

“What the fuck, Richie,” Eddie says quietly. 

Richie doesn’t answer. Just thinks about how this would go if they were in Eddie’s room or by the river or in the clubhouse, a big open space that they would close by pressing into each other – shoving, pushing, screaming until the world shrinks to a pinpoint. All the things Eddie would allow, the honesty he could spill out by touch and teasing, how he’d push the limits, but a gentle kind of pushing that wasn't pushing at all, the sad nudging of a begging creature that never took more than what he was allowed. 

Richie spits out the last lingering bits – ignores Eddie’s huff of disgust – and heaves a quiet breath. He’s nowhere near sober but Eddie’s return to overly argumentative dickhead has cleared the fog somewhat, enough for him to bang his head gently into the glass with frustration at himself. He can’t fucking believe he actually thought this was a good fucking idea.

“…Richie?” Eddie says, having calmed down considerably. He’s almost – gentle, all concern without the bluster to go along with it. If the Losers had a mom friend – which they didn’t, not even fucking close, they were and probably remain to be disasters with nary a responsible bone in their bodies, except maybe Stan – it would be Eddie. Eddie, who was perpetually like a mom on a busy day at a theme park, armed to his elbows with antibacterial wipes and band-aids, yes, ones with cool cartoons on them. Except he’s also a teenage boy, so he always has to be a little shit about it. , Richie thinks, grinning, even though he knows no one ever thought it as a compliment. It was a privilege, getting Eddie to sheath his claws. Another strike against that fucking hellhole of a town. 

“Richie, for fuck’s sake!” 

“Sorry, sorry, still here,” Richie says. 

“Yeah, I know, shitdick, I can hear you breathing.” 

Richie smiles. 

“Why the fuck did you leave?”

Richie stops smiling. 

“You.” Eddie pauses, clears his throat. “You didn’t even say – I mean, you didn’t tell – any of us.”

“Hey, no fair,” Richie says. “I said bye to Bev.”

Eddie is the one person Richie knows who can make sounds with his facial expressions, so he knows for a fact that he’s scowling. “Yeah, I meant the rest of us, asshole. You didn’t even tell _Stan_.” Which, Richie understands, in an ordinary circumstance, would be batshit. Richie tells Stan everything, which everyone knows. Richie tells Stan when he goes to the fucking bathroom. 

Richie steps out of the booth as far as the cord will let him for some fresh air, avoids making eye contact with the pile of his DNA on the floor. “I guess.” He sighs. “I just couldn’t fucking stand it anymore.” 

“Stand what?”

“Anything. All of it.” 

He’s aware of what a teenage cliché he sounds. He grew up in a nice enough family, in a nice enough neighborhood. He never wanted for anything, except maybe attention, and then when he got older, he got so good at getting it that his earlier deficit of it broke even. He had friends who loved him fiercely – who still do, if his wham, bam, thank you ma’am act didn’t annoy them into never speaking to him again. So, he knows what a Salinger piece of shit he sounds like, whining about his problems because they were too small to really be real. 

But breathing is a black and white sort of thing. And Derry suffocated him, was a black, icky presence that lived in the core of him, pressing deep into every corner of his body until there was no room for anything else. The truth of him, whatever that was. It made sense that a demonic clown took residence in Derry. There was plenty of hell in that place; IT blended right in. What’s another being made of hate in a town chock full of them?

“Living there just felt like lying,” he continues, shrugging for an audience of none. 

Richie doesn’t explain but Eddie doesn’t ask because he knows. Deep inside, he understands. 

“You could have asked us to come with you.” Eddie says instead, low. 

“Honestly, I wasn’t really thinking.” _I wanted to ask you_, Richie would say, if he was made of different stuff. 

Eddie falls silent again. Richie starts scraping his foot in lazy patterns on the ground, circles and shivery letters spelling out things he pretends not to know. 

“We would have come with you,” Eddie says, a breath of a sentence. 

Richie sighs. “Yeah, I know.”

Strangely, Eddie growls a noise of something like frustration. “I would have come with you, you dumb fucking moron.” 

Richie snorts. “Oh, really? How would that go? Tell me, princess, would I climb through your window and ask you to fly away with me on my magic carpet?”

“Better than what you actually did, asshole,” Eddie hisses. 

And there it is. 

If Richie’s been carefully portioning out each memory of the Losers, of Eddie, there’s one he has refused to think about, has shoved deep in a dark corner of his mind and let his heart swallow the key. That kiss – and he hesitates to think of it even now, even with the live feeling of Eddie on the other end of the line – the shocked slackening of Eddie’s mouth, the faint pain from Richie’s forehead colliding too-suddenly with Eddie’s, sweet breath and skin tacky with sweat; Richie squeezes his eyes shut and remembers it all. He wonders if this is how they felt, the first few people to ever experience color TV; like their heart would pump to exploding with the overload of sensation. 

He chooses his words very carefully, feeling the weight of each one like a tangible thing on his tongue. “Well. I couldn’t leave without a kiss goodbye.” 

The silence seems to echo, and Richie has to stop himself from heaving a deep, labored breath against the tightening in his lungs.

“Why did you even leave at all?” Eddie says in a tight murmur; a snarling beast whispering through bared teeth. 

Richie barks a single laugh. “Oh, Eds. What a fucking question. A better one would be why I'd stay.” Like he didn't know. Like the answer didn't wrap their tongue around his and left him stumbling out the window with his lips buzzing and hands clammy.

"I don't know. I always thought you'd have a few reasons." 

Goddamn him. "Don't ask for a truth you don't want to hear, Eds." 

"Stop fucking lying to me, Richie."

An embarrassment. Like a murder of crows, or a flight of bees - that's what he'd call the love that he feels, welling up and filling his lungs in a way that gives the word no meaning. Love; Richie scoffs at it. He'd name it like they name storms - Eddie, plain and simple and apocalyptic. 

"I've humiliated myself in front of you so much, you'd think I'd be used to it." Richie laughs, a brittle, bitter sound. Horribly, his voice cracks and he's biting words out around his heart lodged in his throat. "Okay, Eds, let's play a game. Two truths, one lie. I'm a flaming homo, I'm a Sagittarius, and I've been in love with you even before I had pubes."

And that's all she fucking wrote.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think! Comments, love, corrections, all welcome! 
> 
> I am also on tumblr.


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